Transparent network service devices, such as a wide-area application services device, are used in network deployments to optimize network traffic flow and accelerate applications over a wide area network (WAN). These network services devices may attract network traffic in several ways. For example, these devices may reside physically within the path of traffic flow and may receive network traffic. Service devices may also receive network traffic when the traffic is directed in accordance with a traffic redirection scheme such as a Web Cache Communication Protocol (WCCP).
When the service devices receive network traffic, packets of the network traffic can sometimes traverse the same network link more than once, depending on how the traffic routing is configured in the network. In one example, when packets traverse the same network link more than once, network elements in the path (e.g., a network service device) may detect a packet loop. This is because the packets that are sent by the network service device may go to a first router device of a network, and may be sent back to the network service device. The network service device might confuse these packets with packets that it directly receives from client devices of the network.